


Bloom

by scribefindegil



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, The People's Revolution of the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 06:37:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6970204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year that Tiffany Aching danced with the Wintersmith, there was a hard frost in Ankh-Morpork the night of May the 19th.</p>
<p>Sam Vimes searches for lilacs, Sybil Ramkin continues to be Better Than You, and the world moves on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bloom

The year that Tiffany Aching danced with the Wintersmith, there was a hard frost in Ankh-Morpork the night of May the 19th.

For the most part, it went unnoticed. There was no snow, and, unlike on the surrounding plains, people didn’t grow many things in the city. That was part of the problem, Sam Vimes learned as he sat through meeting after interminable meeting. Anhk-Morpork imported its food, and at the moment the crops that were supposed to be feeding the city in a few months were out freezing in their fields. He listened to Lord Vetinari and the Guild leaders and some panicked representatives from the Sto Plains talk about supply chains and international imports and which crops could still be re-sown until his ears ached.

As he marched home that night, he didn’t notice that every lilac he passed was shedding, green buds that had just been beginning to swell when the frost hit littering the ground at his feet. He didn’t notice until he woke up on the 25th of May and realized with a jolt that he hadn’t smelled a single lilac the previous day. Normally, the city was thick with the scent and he did his best to ignore it until the day when he couldn’t.

The lilacs didn’t bloom at the exact same time every year. Some years they were just beginning to bud on the 25th, and some years he had to scour the streets looking for dark corners where everything was late-blooming. The year he was twenty, when wearing the lilac was less about remembrance and more about youthful defiance and the burning of grief that was still too fresh to bear, he’d smelled the blooms from an alley off Cockbill Street for a week, every time he went in to work or came back. On the 25th, when he finally turned down the alley to break off a plume, the scent was still heavy in the air but every flower on the bush had turned shriveled and brown. He’d cried there in the ally, and then made his way to the pub where the coppers drank. Colon had broken off a sprig from the large plume he was wearing and handed it to him silently, and Vimes had woken up the next morning face-down in the gutter with the wilted flower clutched in his hand.

There’d never been a year when there were no lilacs in bloom on the 25th. Vimes threw on his clothes and ran out unshaven into the streets. The bushes behind the house were barren, but they were exposed. Surely there was somewhere else . . . He ran past bush after bush covered in dead leaves, tried every spot he could think of that might have been sheltered enough for a plume of flowers to survive, but he found nothing.

When the clocks began to chime, he turned for home. This wasn’t giving up, he told himself. There were still places he hadn’t checked. He could go look again after Young Sam’s birthday party. Sybil had been planning it for weeks.

A small, treacherous part of him wondered whether it was for the best that he couldn’t find lilac. This way, he could celebrate his son, celebrate what made this day wonderful and joyful, the way any parent should do, instead of having the gloom of remembrance overshadow it. The thought lingered for only a moment. No. It was both. It had to be both. It was a day of tragedy and remembrance and it was a day of joy at the same time. You couldn’t separate them. You couldn’t let the sorrow swallow you up, but you couldn’t leave it behind either.

He’d hoped that he could slip back into the house with no one the wiser, but Willikins had already taken up his post at the door, ready to welcome Young Sam’s hoard of playmates (and, much less pleasantly, their parents) to the mansion. When he saw Vimes approaching he reached inside the door and pulled something from a shelf.

“Your Grace was out early,” said the butler. Vimes grunted his assent. Then he stopped. Even before he saw what was in Willikins’ hand, the smell hit him, sweet and thick.

“How . . . ?” he began, as his butler pinned the spray of lilac blossoms, fresh in their tiny tube of water, to the front of his shirt.

“Her Ladyship wishes to see you,” was his only reply.

He stepped into the house in a daze, and found Sybil in the drawing room talking to the Dowager Duchess of Quirm. Brenda smiled when she saw Vimes and patted him on the back with a hand like saddle leather.

Vimes didn’t hear her greeting. He was too busy staring at the enormous vase of lilacs sitting on the table.

“Brenda was just stopping by to chat,” said Sybil. “She’s in the city to talk about seed sharing with some of the Sto Plains ambassadors. Did you know what a mild climate they have in Quirm? We really must visit one of these days.”

Brenda let out a heavy bark of a laugh at Vimes’ expression. “Sybil dear, it was lovely to chat, but I must be going,” she said. “Let me know how that new Marshback cross comes along!”

Sybil crossed over to Vimes and kissed him on the cheek. “Good morning, dear,” she said.

As the day went on, more people stopped by to pay their respects to Young Sam, who listened solemnly as they congratulated him. Most of them walked past the lilacs without pausing to comment. The ones who had been _there_ left with plumes in their helmets or buttonholes. Vimes hung back, letting his son enjoy the day.

Young Sam would grow up in a world which—gods, it was a mess, there was not getting around that. The whole Disc talked to each other now, so there were a million new ways to get into trouble. But it was a different sort of mess than it had been when Vimes was young. He wasn’t going to call it better; for every problem they dealt with a dozen more cropped up in their place. People stayed people, which meant there was always a new set of stubborn self-righteous little bastards to deal with. But maybe the mess the world was now was the kind of muck that things could grow in.

Vimes visited the graveyard as the sun set, taking the last of Brenda’s bouquet with him. Reg was just climbing out of his grave as he arrived. The zombie looked around him and blinked the dirt out of his face.

“Ah,” he said, “So they did find some after all.” Then he caught sight of Vimes and saluted as smartly as he could (which wasn’t very, since two of his fingers fell off in the process). “Evening, Commander.”

Vimes nodded. “Evening, Reg.”

The bunches of lilacs on the graves were there like they were every year. The hard-boiled egg with its ribbon was there. Someday, everyone who still knew what had happened would be resting in their own graves and there would be no egg, no lilacs. Only, probably, Reg, returning to his grave for the one day it felt like home. That was as it should be. The People’s Republic of Treacle Mine Road wasn’t a story to be passed on. The men who had died weren’t heroes. They would be mourned and remembered by the people who had been there with them, and then, eventually, they wouldn’t be.

Vimes set down the heavy metal vase the lilacs were in and huffed.

“Are you leaving that?” asked Reg.

“Just the flowers. The vase is probably some Quirmian heirloom, which normally would be grounds to chuck it off the tallest building in the neighborhood, but Brenda’s better than most of that lot.”

Vimes reached down to pull the flowers out of their container and was surprised when he encountered resistance. He tugged harder, then stared in surprise at the roots he’d pulled up and the chunks of soil at the bottom of what he’d thought was a vase.

Reg shrugged. “I’ve already got a shovel.”

They planted the bush behind the head of Keel’s grave. Maybe it would survive. Maybe it wouldn’t. That was the way of things. But regardless, next year there would be lilacs. And there would be sorrow. And despite it all there would be joy.

Vimes walked home with dirt clinging to his fingernails and the scent of lilac on his clothes and kissed his son goodnight.


End file.
